Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of fraudulent phone calls in each of the last three years; what recent assessment she has made of the impact of that matter on victims; and whether those figures are included in national crime statistics.

Reports of fraud offences are made to Action Fraud and are recorded as criminal offences by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). These offences include ‘consumer phone fraud.’ This type of fraud combines phone calls, missed calls and text messages. A detailed explanation of ‘consumer phone fraud’ is provided at the following link: Counting rules for fraud (publishing.service.gov.uk).

The Home Office collects data on these reports. This data is published as official statistics by the Office for National Statistics on a quarterly basis. The latest breakdown of fraud offences is available from October 2019 to September 2021 in table A5 below:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesappendixtables